Two students who were aboard a bus in Uganda involved in a crash that left a Chicago filmmaker dead returned home Wednesday at O’Hare International Airport.
Barbara A. Sizemore Academy students Hayah Rasul and Terrance Dantzler were in Uganda to present their documentary about saving their school at a film festival. Chicago filmmaker David Steiner helped the charter school eighth-graders put together the documentary and was escorting them on the trip.
Steiner was seated at the front of the bus, loaded with camera gear and crew as they headed to a remote enclave of Hebrew-speaking Ugandans for a Hanukkah celebration, when the bus was struck by a reckless driver, the Sun-Times reported.
On Wednesday, two mothers embraced their children at the airport upon their return.
“It is one of the happiest days in my life, for my child to go through a perilous experience, so many things could have gone wrong for her other than losing someone so important,” said Alesia Patterson, Rasul’s mother.
Rasul remembered Steiner positively when he returned.
“He was a happy person, he wouldn’t want everybody sad, like Terrance told me when I was crying, he wouldn't want anybody crying,” she said.
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Dantzler suffered an injury in the crash and had to be placed on a stretcher in order to leave the airport.
“I feel good now that I am home, I am safe,” he said.
Dantzler said Steiner gave him and his classmates a chance to tell their story in a powerful way.
“If it wasn’t f or him, I wouldn’t be able to do certain stuff that I do,” he said. "We went to go get an Emmy—he opened a lot of doors for me.”
Steiner, 51, had spent more than a week in the East African nation, filming a documentary about a pair of Sudanese boys he and his son, Itamar, had befriended while the teens were in school together in Israel, Steiner’s fianceé, Diane Silverberg, told the Sun-Times Monday evening.
Steiner is survived by his son Itamar, and two daughters, Fahar and Maya. Funeral services likely won’t take place until late next week, Silverberg said.
“He was having the time of his life,” Silverberg said. “Everything he did, he did with joy and gusto. He was just an incredibly giving person.”
